The food delivery startup space is getting hot, crowded and very well-funded. Within the 'food & drink' category, Postmates has ranked neck-and-neck with Seamless.

Where is this data coming from?

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The food delivery startup space (or Uber for Food if you prefer) is getting hot, crowded and very well-funded. Between Q2’13 and Q1’14, companies operating in the food & grocery eCommerce and delivery industry raised nearly $486M across 109 deals globally. Investment fervor has been further driven by well-performing IPOs in the market including Benchmark-backed GrubHub Seamless and UK-based Just-Eat, which counted investors including Index Ventures, Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures.

While funding dollars are way up, we wanted to take a look at recent rankings data we are collecting for over 1M apps in the iTunes App Store to get a sense for which venture capital-backed mobile apps in the food delivery space have performed best recently – and which emerging players may pose a threat to GrubHub Seamless (mkt cap: $2.6B).

Specifically, we analyzed five different food delivery apps that have recently received venture funding – DoorDash, Munchery, Sprig, Postmates & Spoonrocket. While DoorDash and Postmates focus on restaurant delivery, Spoonrocket, Munchery and Sprig offer pre-prepared meals on-demand. Together, the five startups alone have raised nearly $100M in aggregate funding from investors including heavy-hitters Sequoia, Greylock and Accel. 83% of the funding total has come since the start of 2014.

And according to the mobile app data, while both the GrubHub and Seamless apps carry a steady lead in the ‘Food & Drink’ rankings, venture-backed upstarts are gaining steam. Specifically, Spark Capital-backed Postmates, which delivers food in addition to on-demand goods ranging from groceries to coffee, has actually trended neck-and-neck with Seamless in the category ranks over the past couple months. Postmates currently operates in San Francisco, New York City, Chicago, DC, LA and Seattle.

Each of the four other apps analyzed have also seen their rank improve in the ‘Food and Drink’ category since the start of January despite operating primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area and/or greater Los Angeles area but now rank very close with one another.

As Sprig, Munchery and Spoonrocket look to likely expand their reach into new hubs, we will certainly continue to monitor the food delivery app data for any interesting developments. If you’d like to to stay abreast of additional mobile app store analyses and fast moving publishers, sign up for our free newsletter.